Black is not a Colour

We head back to Lectoure next week so I'm doing the usual scurry around Edinburgh shops to gather all the 'stuff' we need to load into our longsuffering car-that-thinks-it's-a-van before the return journey. Yesterday I was in a large DIY store buying paint. And yes, they do sell paint in France, but at such an exhorbitant price, I now understand why the majority of our French neighbours don't seem to use it very often.

Since economy was key and I do have several battleships to transform, I made a beeline for the aisle that advertised 'buy one, get one half price'. I selected two large tins of black gloss paint (don't ask!), together with a couple of smoke alarms (again, don't ask!) and trundled my trolley to the checkout.
"These are on special offer aren't they?" I said as the assistant put them through. Then followed one of those baffling conversations that I swear checkout assistants delight in as a way to pass the time.
"Nope. They're coming up full price."
"But there's a notice on that aisle over there."
"Not coming up on my till. Sorry."
Behind me, the queue was getting restive.
"Well could you check with someone?"
"Can't leave the till. Sorry."
Sorry was obviously shorthand for 'don't give a stuff'.
"Don't you have some way you could call the supervisor?"
From the pained look he gave me, you'd think I'd asked him to commune with the dead.
Then, by some paint purchasing miracle, a supervisor materialised.
"I'll go and find out for you," she said briskly.
Checkout assistant shunted me aside in favour of more docile customers, and I waited, and waited, and waited. But the wait turned out to be worth it, because I discovered something: BLACK IS NOT A COLOUR
The offer only applied to coloured paints, but 'as a goodwill gesture', (a patronising phrase, popular among retailers, to cover the fact that they've got it wrong), they would put my second tin through at half price.
I emerged from the skirmish as triumphant as if I'd just negotiated an international peace treaty, and armed with a brand new fact to impress people with at dinner parties: BLACK IS NOT A COLOUR

Later on in the day, reading another extract from my Lent book,(Barefoot Disciple by Stephen Cherry) I came across something that resonated with my 'new fact'.

'We can only ever expect to transcend our disappointments if we allow ourselves to really feel them....to accept the process, realise that hopes and aspirations have all too suddenly come to a halt and to hold the moment carefully, so that(it)...will become the energy with which one moves off in a different direction.'

Cherry seemed to be talking about an example of the black times that we all experience, that we choose either to shrug off and be stoical about, or own up to and really own, so that we can use them to move on. Black is so much more than a single colour. It's the shade(?)that works perfectly as a foil for most other colours, adding life, vibrancy and dramatic impact. One of my most vivid visual memories is of a take-off in a plane during a storm, seeing a vivid rainbow arc etched against black clouds.

'As they pass through the Valley of Baca (the Valley of Weeping - a black place)they make it a place of springs.' Psalm 84:6

Thank God for black, even if it isn't a colour!

Do you think the black times can be valuable? And on a more prosaic note, do you have any shopping frustrations you'd like to get off your chest!?

No renovation without disruption

Yesterday is known as Passion Sunday in the Christian calendar, but I didn’t feel a great deal of passion when I walked into the beautiful cathedral where we worship each week when we’re in Edinburgh. Normally there’s a magnificent vista along the nave, past the choir stalls, lit in the evening by candles, to the white altar with its intricately carved stonework, glowing columns of vivid stained glass beyond.

Yesterday the whole vista was marred. Stark scaffolding towered from floor to ceiling. The choir stalls, altar and stained glass could only be glimpsed through a criss-cross mess of iron struts and wooden planks. The struts were a haphazard patchwork of lurid yellow, pewter grey and rusty brown, their effect uniformly ugly.

Next to me, my husband’s expression mirrored my own. We slumped in our seats and prepared to endure a dismal service. But as the service got underway, the scaffolding was transformed for me into something of an object lesson, my own private sermon. Yes, it made a mess of the landscape, turning a serene space into a building site. But the disruption and ugliness were necessary, an unlovely means to an end. This time next Sunday, the minister assured us, the renovation work would be complete and the place would be even more beautiful than before. But you had to take that on trust.

I prefer life to proceed in ordered harmony, for circumstances to work out the way I want without disruption or disappointment, without frustrated hopes, financial worries or concerns about health or family. But I’m God’s renovation project, and renovation means scaffolding.

Can you identify the ‘scaffolding’ in your own life? Can you look back on difficult circumstances and see how they were used in renovation?